(a) The effect on the Fair Labor Standards Act of the various provisions of the Portal Act must necessarily be determined by viewing the two acts as interelated parts of the entire statutory scheme for the establishment of basic fair labor standards. 7 The Portal Act contemplates that employers will be relieved, in certain circumstances, from liabilities or punishments to which they might otherwise be subject under the Fair Labor Standards Act. 8 But the act makes no express change in the national policy, declared by Congress in section 2 of the Fair Labor Standards Act, of eliminating labor conditions "detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers." The legislative history indicates that the Portal Act was not intended to change this general policy. 9 The Congressional declaration of policy in section 1 of the Portal Act is explicitly directed to the meeting of the existing emergency and the correction, both retroactively and prospectively, of existing evils referred to therein. 10 Sponsors of the legislation in both Houses of Congress asserted that it "in no way repeals the minimum wage requirements and the overtime compensation requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act" 11 that it "protects the legitimate claims" under that Act, 12 and that one of the objectives of the sponsors was to "preserve to the worker the rights he has gained under the Fair Labor Standards Act." 13 It would therefore appear that the Congress did not intend by the Portal Act to change the general rule that the remedial provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act are to be given a liberal interpretation 14 and exemptions therefrom are to be narrowly construed and limited to those who can meet the burden of showing that they come "plainly and unmistakably within (the) terms and spirit" of such an exemption. 15
7 As appears more fully in
the following sections of this part, the several provisions of the Portal Act
relate, in pertinent part, to actions, causes of action, liabilities, or
punishments based on the nonpayment by employers to their employees of minimum
or overtime wages under the provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Section
13 of the Portal Act provides that the...
